Chương 127: Chapter 126 – To Be Human

We're gonna need you to laze that dreadnaught."

"Colonel, say again," said Cole." Son, Christmas came early this year, cause I got something a bit better than a toy to play with. I need that tub painted." Cole narrowed his brow.

"My team didn't pack out a SOFLAM for this op." Alexa leaned in close to the handset.

"Belay that, Colonel, wait one."" Roger that." Cole raised an eyebrow at her as she handed the handset back.

"Archie's got a laser designator. But it won't reach twenty klicks. We need that dreadnaught closer." She looked over the edge of the roof at the flashes and pops at the western edge of the city.

"Or we need to be closer to it."

"Then what the fuck are we standing around here, for?" said Cole. He hefted his pack and shook his rifle to wake it up. Then he took the handset back.

"Colonel, we'll be at the west end of the city in thirty mikes. Won't have comms, but we've got precious cargo ready to extract if Dabir can get his boats there."

"He's already standing by with some extra muscle, son. Good hunting."

"Airborne out," said Cole. He handed the radio back to Alexa. Howie clapped his hands together.

"Woo, strike package. What do you think? HIMARS from Hamilton? Can they fit one into the portal room?"

"Maybe Hard Tone with an otherworld MANPAD launcher," guessed Roxy.

"I think it's going to take more than a shoulder-fired rocket to crack that hull," said Besson, looking out at the distant dreadnaught.

"Even for Hard Tone." Below, Cole could hear the rumble of gas engines revving up as the LouixCorp soldiers prepared to head to the beach.

"That's our ride," he said.

"Move your feet, not your mouths. Let's go." Cole led them back down, where they found the motor pool and more of the LouixCorp militants in civilian vehicles retrofit with weapons and armor—many of which looked scavenged from automaton sources. He recognized the beam cannon from one of the four-legged bots, and several of the small energy blasters arranged in battery on the flatbed of another vehicle.

Not a single proper military vehicle among them, but the fanatic techno-cultist corporate fighters were no less motivated for it. They cheered when Cole and his team joined them, several firing weapons into the air and offering space aboard vehicles. They had to split between three trucks, with Clockwork Elliot and his pet automatons nearly requiring a vehicle on their own. Cole helped Alexa lever the red reaper into the back of an up-armored flatbed with them, then climbed aboard himself.

The convoy started to roll out, navigating the narrow corridors that had been cleared along the roads leading west.

"You good out here, Elliot? Hextant's signal must be stronger, now." Cole eyed the other automatons. The clockwork familiar twisted to look at him." It is. And he's angry—or as angry as a computer can get. But this thing's signal is stronger within about thirty meters or so. As long as I keep these Mark 1 bots close, we'll be fine. Might even be able to wrangle more."

"Don't worry about that," said Cole.

"Your priority is staying alive. We're going to a battlefield. There's going to be things there you might not be ready to see. Violence, noise, people dying. It's not like in movies. You need to steel yourself." The lenses on the familiar turned down." I've seen it. Seen what Hextant's bots and the monsters do to people. Seen it through feeds and sensors as it's happening."

"You also need to know," said Cole, "that you can say no. This isn't your job. You never signed up for any of this. You're not a soldier and you don't owe us or these people anything. You could die here. You can tell us all to go fuck ourselves and make a beeline back to Earth. I'll make it happen." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"I think it's—it would be worse, you know. If I was still in a human body. If I had hormones. If I had adrenaline." he looked at his robotic hands." If I still had a regular human brain I don't think I could take it. I'm kinda grateful, you know? That I'm like this here. That I don't have to feel the fear or feel sick from seeing people get hurt or killed."

"You're still human, Elliot," said Alexa.

"Doesn't matter what hardware you're runnin'. Never forget it."" I know," said Elliot." All the versions of me know. I still feel. Like, intellectually I understand empathy. I remember what it's like to die. I think that's the big difference between me and Hextant. He doesn't understand. He saw injustice and inequality, but his solution was uncaring. He might know how humans work and act and live, but he doesn't understand." This was so far outside Cole's realm of expertise.

He looked to Alexa for help, but she just shrugged.

"That's too much philosophy for an idiot like me, Elliot," said Cole.

"You got the wrong audience for this speech. But I'm glad you understand what you're getting into." Elliot laughed and shrugged his robotic soldiers." Hex-core me has a lot of processing cycles to think about this kind of stuff. This hardware might be outdated by Earth standards, but compared to a regular human brain? Man, you wouldn't believe what it's like being able to solve five-thousand computations in a second."

Fifteen minutes later, Cole started to smell the acrid smoke from the battlefield, despite the wind blowing the opposite direction.

The clatter of gunfire rattled louder and fuller, no longer the hollow, low-frequency rattling of distant gunfire but the meaty pop-pop of full-throated rifle rounds. And above it all, the shriek of primitive turbine engines. A small hill of rubble blocked the road ahead from a structure whose side had collapsed outward across the street. Beyond, one of the flying transport drones rose above the rubble and yawed toward the convoy.

Cole ducked his head as a rocket from the transport whistled overhead, exploding against a building behind them and showering them with dust and debris. Ahead, two of the vehicles opened up with mounted guns at the open bay of the transport, cutting through automatons onboard. But the bots fired back as well, and they had marksmen among them. One of the truck gunners went down to a heavy round that tore his arm off at the shoulder. The LouixCorp militants started spilling out of vehicles and moving to cover.

"Dismount!" shouted Cole, jumping over the side of the truck.

"Howie, kill that fuckin' thing!" Howie had his cannon up already, its barrel braced on a shattered windowsill. He fired four shots in quick succession. The first two went wide, but the last two smashed into one of the shrouded engines with bursts of frost that spread across the surface and warped the metal from the thermal shock. The transport lurched as black smoke and debris erupted from the engine.

Several of the automatons within spilled out, cartwheeling through the air and smashing to pieces against the ground. The transport launched another rocket as it drifted out of line of sight, but the round spiraled off into the air at an angle that would probably carry it over most of the city. Clockwork Elliot surprised Cole again by reconfiguring himself to a multi-rotor drone with two guns hanging down beneath his body.

He lifted off, guns thumping as he hammered the few automatons not ripped apart from falling out of the transport. Cole shot a glance at Alexa.

"Look," she said, "Archie couldn't do that shit. I told you he modified my ability."" I built a drone for a competition last year," shouted Elliot." So this is nothin'!"

"Robotics club president," muttered Cole, shaking his head. LouixCorp had hit the jackpot with Elliot. They must have agreed, because they cheered and surged forward underneath him, climbing up the hill of rubble alongside his bound automatons and charging into the battle below. Cole keyed his radio.

"Move up! Three story structure on the left with the red sign. Should give us good line of sight for the laser." He looked up at Elliot and pointed.

"Meet us up on the roof!" His team moved left, scrabbling over the rubble until they reached what had once been a restaurant or café. Wrought iron tables and chairs lay overturned in the courtyard, and a small gate had been smashed. Besson moved up and kicked what was left of the door straight off its hinges and Nutmeg dashed in ahead of him, barking, while Besson swept in right behind. Cole entered second, tapping Besson on his shoulder and holding his offset as they moved through a kitchen and down a hallway.

Cole burned a charge and saw a soft red glow in the right-side doorway. He tapped Besson's shoulder.

"In there," said Cole, pointing.

"Nutmeg, go," whispered Besson. Nutmeg charged ahead and rounded the corner. She must have found the hostiles Cole had sensed, because she snarled and the red flash of the energy weapons illuminated the opposite side of the hall. A silvery sheen crawled across Besson's skin as he swung right and opened up with his machine gun, while Cole moved through a door slightly further down the hall on the left. Two automaton riflemen were climbing through the windows.

Cole opened up with his rifle, punching a half-dozen holes in the first. Roxy's shotgun thundered off his right shoulder, tearing the top half of the second automaton to shreds. A moment later, the impacts burst again from her afterburn affix, filling the room with the smell of scorched circuitry. Roxy tapped him on the shoulder as she moved past behind her shield. She turned the corner and looked up.

"Stairs!" she called.

"Nona, Besson, Rox, hold this level," shouted Cole.

"Alexa, with me and Howie." It was time to see what Colonel Beauregard had in store for Hextant and his machines.